


I'm sorry, he left Who in charge?

by BloodySlushy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And general Tomfuckery, Buffonery, Fluff and Crack, Gen, What would happen if Tim was in charge of magnus institute, absolute chaos, essentially, this is from a prompt by tumblr user fangirlingpuggle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27931405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodySlushy/pseuds/BloodySlushy
Summary: After Elias Bouchard takes a rather nasty spill down three flights of stairs, totally accidentally, and is left out of commission the Magnus Institute is left to it's next successor a Mr. Timothy Stoker. This comes as a shock to everyone, most of all Tim. Will he be able to not run the prestigious institute into the ground? No one knows, least of all Tim.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	I'm sorry, he left Who in charge?

**Author's Note:**

> Elias Bouchard plots until he doesn't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a cat loose in the Archives. What crimes will he commit?

Elias Bouchard was plotting. This was not an uncommon occurrence for this man, as a matter of fact he spent more time plotting than he did actually acting on said plots. Right now he’s plotting how to steal the body and subsequent life of one of his subordinates. Why, exactly, he’s doing this is a wonderful question; The Magnus Institute is currently headed by himself, Elias Bouchard, but should anything happen to his current body he needs a successor lined up to take the semi-metaphorical throne.

Enter Timothy Stoker, Archival Assistant with no family left to speak of. Tim was the best choice, he’d worked at the Magnus Institute for long enough with a decent work ethic to not be a wholly unfounded replacement. Pair that with the fact that no one would miss him, he was Perfect.

Elias stood from his desk after having filled out the appropriate paperwork for his succession plans. Satisfied with his work he turned to leave his office. What happened next was a very rapid succession of events lasting roughly 40 seconds that would have unforeseen consequences.

As Elias stood up he knocked a pen off his desk. Normally this would be a relatively inconsequential nuinscance. Today it was Not. As Elias stepped out from his desk and headed towards the door he tripped on the pen and fell into the nearby window, entangling himself in the velvet curtains he’d picked out with his (Ex) Husband. Trapped in a green prison of over priced fabric he fell out his door into the adjoining hallway, and rather unfortunately towards the stairs adjacent to his office.

~~~~~~~~

At the other end of the hallway was a very out of breath Martin K. Blackwood who was currently chasing down a very wet and indignant cat. You see, his boss, Jon had brought in his Ex-Girlfriend’s cat for the archives’ unofficial ‘Bring your pet to work day’. Whilst the Archival team was embroiled in a heated debate about the definitions of what is considered edible and that, No Sasha you can’t eat everything you come across once, The Admiral had slipped away. This incited an institute wide manhunt with Jon taking the basement, Sasha the first floor, Tim on second, and Martin on the third floor. Martin had been the one of all of them fortunate enough to find the Admiral. What was unfortunate was that he had cornered the cat in the Men’s bathroom, where in a misguided bid for freedom the Admiral had fallen into one of the toilets.

This was how we ended up with a sopping wet cat and a very anxious assistant in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the burrito that was presently Elias stood at the edge of the staircase the Admiral leapt at him trying to claw his way up the curtain clad man. This was enough to tip Elias over and send him tumbling down three flights of stairs. And as if to add insult to injury once he landed at the bottom, a frumpled and heavily banged up mess of a man, he went to stand up. At the same time on the other end of the institute there was an Accident in the archives.

~~~~~~~~

Jonathan Sims had been searching for the Admiral in the archives and was currently looking in the storage room where boxes upon boxes of statements were kept. To say that it was claustrophobic was an understatement. If OSHA had 1. Any purview over Britain's goings on, and 2. Inspected this room, they would’ve seen it as a loss cause and just torched the place. As Jon wormed his way through the statement mountains perched rather precariously on shoddy shelving units he scoured the place for any sign of The Admiral. Georgie would have his head if he told her he’d lost her cat in the archives. Instead of finding the missing cat he found a spider’s web. With his face.

Naturally Jon did what anyone would do and shouted rather loudly a myriad of profanities whilst flailing wildly. But such as all wild flailing inevitably leads to, he bumped into one of the more fragile shelves and sent it careening over. Due to the aforementioned nature of this storage room, one shelf falling created a domino effect that led to the very loud destruction of not one but seven shelves. The force of these hefty shelves and paper falling, while not terribly great, was enough to rattle the bones of the ancient building just enough.

~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile Elias, sans Admiral who’d been smart enough to leap back off of him and not take the journey down three flights, was standing up only to be struck by the falling portrait of Jonah Magnus that stood above the bottom of the stairwell. This was the final straw that did Elias in. With a healthy blow to the head from a 40 pound ornate frame the painting was encased in, he went down. 

Sasha James was also having a rough go at luck. She had been scouring the first floor and ended up in Artefact storage searching for the Admiral with Sonja who’d offered her aid to alleviate boredom if nothing else. This was how she ended up starting a fire. She and Sonja had split up to scour the museum-like storage of every cursed object under the sun. Among these was a rather tall candelabra that had been burning for the past 30 straight years. In the spirit of today’s chaos, Sasha, having thought she saw the Admiral, dove for the imaginary cat. On her way down she clipped the candelabra which, in turn, tipped into the screaming painting, a painting of people screaming that actually screamed if you looked at it, which was alight in seconds. While the fire was fast Sonja was faster, having heard the commotion found Sasha and the now very much on fire and very much screaming painting. She hit the fire alarms.

~~~~~~~~

Elias, despite being very frivolous with his spending decisions, never actually put much into practical things around the institute like a good fire suppression system. The one they currently had was actually designed for airplane hangers and only extended to the top three floors. This is what lead to the normally very well groomed man buried in about 3 feet of foam mixed with his own blood.

Tim, however, had been aware of nothing that had just happened. He’d been on the second floor which is home to the library. He had been searching for the admiral in the library staff's break room when he was offered the other half of a sandwich that someone hadn’t been able to finish. Never one to pass up free food he accepted and ended up very engrossed in a conversation with Hannah from the library about the ramifications of volkswagens existing in the Cars Cinematic Universe. Through some miracle the fire suppression system failed to activate in the library sparing those inside from being buried in a mountain of foam. This did not save them from ending up coated in foam entirely but it did help. See, when the fire suppression system is tripped the Fire Brigade is alerted. And when the Fire Brigade arrived they had everyone evacuate the now foamed building. This meant having everyone wade through the varying depths of foam to freedom. One unfortunate part of research ended up with five feet of foam dumped on them. During the mass exodus Tim caught a glimpse of Martin now holding an excessively foamy Admiral who was determined to rip Martin to shreds. 

~~~~~~~~

Martin had been the one to get Elias help. Hate the man he did but he wasn’t going to leave him for dead either. He’d managed to flag down some of the firefighters who fished Elias out and called him an Ambulance. It was certainly A Sight. Now Martin stood outside clutching the Admiral to his chest searching for the signs of the rest of the Archival Team. He’d found Jon first in the sea of 80 or so people. Jon had earned himself a decent bubble as he was currently holding the rest of the pets from ‘Bring your pet to work day’. This consisted of Tim’s somewhat ridiculous 5 foot long Banana Snake named Jeremy, Sasha’s betta fish Opal, and Martin’s large and unwieldy Spider Plant Buddy. 

Jon had been standing amongst the ruins of the archival storage when he’d heard shouting and screams from above. Untangling himself from the now toppled shelves and boxes he ran for the stairs, opened the door, and was promptly engulfed in foam that had built up in the door. After a moment of confusion he’d remembered the very unsuitable fire suppression system that he’d been bugging Elias to change for weeks now. Feeling vindicated and rather foamy he’d made his way back down to the Archives to retrieve everyone’s pets. This proved a difficult task as he clambered back up the very foamy and very slippery stairs whilst balancing a fish bowl, a massive plant, and a curious snake who was insistent on diving head first into the foam at first available opportunity. But he still made it outside with the rest of the institute staff gaining a few odd looks along the way. He made it out in time to see a very bloody and disheveled Elias be loaded into an ambulance before Martin had found him.

The two stood before the building which has housed more chaos in the past 5 minutes than it had in a decade.  
“Damn, that was fucked up.” Martin stated resolutely, eliciting a rare laugh from Jon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I've never written much of anything before and just marathoned this chapter in one go. If you see any grammatical error please let me know.
> 
> If you enjoyed feel free to leave a kudos or a comment. Till the next chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written a fic before and I'm currently writing this Directly into Ao3. An absolute madlad I am.


End file.
